Breathe
by piloqutinnguaq
Summary: Love has a funny way of making us do the unimaginable.


_When you die, do you think it feels like flying? _

Lin knew the price she would have to pay. The airships roared closer, thunderclouds looming over them. Tenzin commanded the bison to go faster. Lin couldn't hear anything, with the wind rushing by, the sound of engines whirring, the cries of the baby. She closed her eyes. The earth was calling to her and Lin could not answer. She wondered what it would have been like for her mother when she flew with Aang, truly blind, totally dependent on her friends to keep her from falling to her death at any moment. It was a terrifying thought.

_The blind leading the blind, right? _

Lin knew the price she would have to pay and if only for a moment, she thought it might be too high. She looked down at the children, two faces wet with tears and one straining to be resolved. Lin knew the eldest girl, the one she owed her life to, saw the decision in her eyes. Neither said anything. The girl was the Tenzin out of all of them, the one Lin best understood. Lin wished she could have smiled at her, said something reassuring, promised safety and comfort and happiness, but because she knew that expression far too well she remained motionless. The girl knew better. Lin knew better.

_The world needs airbenders to make us breathe. _

"Tenzin," she said. Lin was loud but firm and inside she was screaming. The blood thudded in her ears, like the earth. Lin needed to feel it again. "Whatever happens to me—don't look back."

If they protested, she did not hear them. It was her duty to protect the last airbenders—the family that she could have had. She felt the metal singing under her and for a long moment she was flying. The first airship crackled under her hands. Lin reached out for the skin, ripping it open sheet by sheet. The wound was fatal. Fear held onto her feet and then she forced herself to leap again, her body screaming out for the metal of the second airship. Flying felt a lot like swimming. Lin knew she was out of her element.

_Some promises are made without any words. _

Lin tore a sizeable hole before the chi blockers emerged, crawling out of the ship like insects from a nest. Maybe it would sink. Maybe fate would be kind to her and Lin would fall to her death. She felt the metal slip away from her as she was forced to her knees. Maybe it would still sink. Lin remembered her mother smiling down at her, the first time she bent a spoon. Her mother could feel everything that she couldn't see. Lin could learn to see everything she couldn't feel. The electricity came again, searing away her mother's face. She thought maybe she could see the white oscillating tail of the bison in the distance. Lin knew, watching the clouds fade away into nothingness, that she could pay any price.

_Love has a funny way of making us do the unimaginable. _

Lin didn't know how much time had passed when she came to consciousness. The world was folding in on itself. She was on her knees again, encased by chi blockers, rain pouring into her eyes. As Amon stood over her, he looked like an avenging angel. She steeled herself. The thunder, so ominous earlier, heralded a storm Republic City had not seen in a decade. The rain seemed appropriate. It pooled around her knees, seeping through her uniform plates. She _knew _the price she would pay. Whenever she closed her eyes, Lin could see her mother, the way her mother saw. The earth reached up to her with the kind of embrace she longed for from her childhood. Lin remembered when she had bent coins into flowers and left them on her pillow for those nights when her mother got home late from work.

_When he takes your bending, do you think it feels like dying? _

She had never seen her mother cry, but Lin knew that if she had been alive to see her daughter on the ground that night, she would have. The sky cried for her. Lin let her hand brush the dirt—silence. The mud slipped through her fingers, wet and heavy and foreign. She knew the price she had paid. She would never hear her mother's voice again.


End file.
